


The Wrong Answer

by elle_stone



Category: Rent - Larson
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-12-27
Updated: 2006-12-27
Packaged: 2017-11-06 06:46:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/415962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elle_stone/pseuds/elle_stone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Things weren't all bad at home.  I mean--there are some things I miss."</p><p>"What, you leave behind a girlfriend or something?"</p><p>"Or something," Mark mumbles.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Wrong Answer

**Author's Note:**

> Written for challenge number 285, to write a college fic, on the speed_rent community on livejournal.

So far, college has taught Mark how to count.

 

*

 

“Eat the cafeteria food only when absolutely necessary,” is Benny’s first piece of advice. “We call it the Radioactive Waste—capital letters there, of course—for a reason.”

 

He has a plate full of cafeteria food even as he is saying this, but Mark lets this go—he’s only been at Brown for a few days, after all, and Benny is the first friend he has made, and, too, Cindy made him promise to be more open, friendlier, and less judgmental as he took advantage of this new start.

 

Ignoring that this was hardly the new start he wanted.

 

They sit down at one of the tables, and Mark tries to stick his fork through some gooey, half-congealed substance he thinks is supposed to be cheese, which has been poured over his pasta to the point of obscuring everything beneath its giant mass. Benny ignores the face he is making. He asks Mark where he’s from.

 

“Scarsdale,” Mark says, barely look up. He is trying to free his fork from the mess. “I kind of…uh…” He wrenches the utensil free. “I kind of hated it there, though.”

 

“Yeah,” Benny smiles. “After I graduated high school, the last thing I wanted to do was spend another second in my house. But you’ll like it here. It isn’t anything like what you left, I bet.”

 

Mark tries to smile back, but Benny’s friendliness, the bland taste of the food, the loud laughter from the next table, the sharp contrast of the bright lights with the swiftly descending darkness outside, has suddenly combined to make him almost sick. He is sharply aware that everyone around him is a stranger.

 

“Things weren’t all bad at home,” he says. “I mean—there are some things I miss.”

 

Benny takes a drink from his bottle of water—the only thing on the entire table Mark trusts—and asks casually, “What, you leave behind a girlfriend or something?”

 

“Or something,” Mark mumbles.

 

Benny doesn’t press. He is a sophomore, confident and content with his current place in life, basking in independence and secure in irresponsibility, and he acts, already, as if he owns the world. Mark has known him for just under twenty-four hours. He likes him. He doesn’t know why, but he likes him. He doesn’t feel any hope when he looks at him, though. Everything that Benny loves about this place, Mark hates.

 

“What are you thinking of majoring in?” Benny asks. He has already finished most of his food and Mark, though he has barely touched his, doesn’t think he’ll try much more. He swallows a tasteless mass of cheese and tomato sauce and croaks out, “Business.”

 

Benny nods. “Me too. You sound pretty sure for someone who’s barely had time to attend any classes.”

 

“Oh no, this has been decided for a long time already,” Mark assures him. “My parents decided before I even attended kindergarten classes.”

 

“Ah, so that’s how it is.” Benny smiles as if he knows exactly—from the first tacit understandings to the final fights and slammed doors and hoarse throats—and asks, “What do you really want to do?”

 

“Film,” Mark answers, just as quick. He knows it isn’t really the truth, just a version of the truth, twisted and torn to fit into the life his parents have forced on him—that he likes to say his parents have forced on him—completely against his own will. If he could have anything he wanted in the world, he knows, he wouldn’t be majoring in anything. He would be in New York. He would be making films. He wouldn’t be alone.

 

Benny leans in close over the table and says, a little low, as if it were some terrible secret, yet he is smiling, “Art.”

 

Mark wonders when exactly it was that he entered this world, so similar and yet so different from what he once called his reality. He walks back to the dorms with Benny, and they part with one thin wall between them, and Mark opens his brand new books and tries to read them, but the letters always blur. The next day he checks his mail, but there is nothing.

 

*

 

Roger’s second letter isn’t much different from his first. Mark carries it between the pages of his books for days without opening it, until the corners of the envelope bend and the return address, already smudged, begins to fade. He reads it outside, holding down the page so that the blustery October wind that threatens it cannot blow it away.

 

Dear Mr. Cohen—You are a dick. You never answer your letters. You probably don’t even read them, just carry them around like you’re waiting for them to read themselves. Or maybe you’re just busy with that all consuming Ivy League Education. I guess it must consume all of your free time and you don’t have a second for a thought of me.

 

Maybe you would like to know how I am doing. The answer is fine. Collins is gone all day and I’m gone all night, so I basically have the loft to myself when I’m here. It’s boring sometimes but I have lots of time to write. The band is getting pretty consistent gigs now and I guess you could say we’re getting a following. Groupies, Mark—they are gorgeous. (Do you mind that I notice?) New York is amazing, and I wish you could see it, but don’t worry—I understand that the ILE keeps you busy. Answer when you have a minute or two to spare, you bastard. Your R.

 

*

 

Just before Christmas, Mark has his third breakdown of the year. These are not giant, overwhelming, mental collapses, from which he must slowly drag his broken psyche back to its former normality. No, they are only short moments of weakness, when he wonders with more anguish than usual just what, exactly, he is doing with his life.

 

He tells himself: studying business. He tells himself: living in Providence, going to classes, eating dinners with Benny, only answering the letters out of fear he will stop writing responses.

 

It is not a happy time.

 

Benny asks him, one afternoon, if he is all right. Instead of saying “Yeah, of course,” as he usually does, he just shrugs.

 

Then he asks, a second delayed, one remark awkwardly placed in their conversation, “Do you ever wish…that you could just fuck the whole business degree, and get that art degree instead, and…leave?”

 

His words don’t come out right, but Benny just glances at him, and answers, “Look, if I really wanted it, I would go after it. But,” and he adds, and Mark knows he doesn’t want to, and Mark is grateful that he does, “I don’t want it like you do.”

 

Mark looks out the window. It has started to snow.

 

*

 

Four days into second semester, during that awkward bridge of gray, snowy, slushy, chill that separates January from February, Mark sees him. Roger. First he is just a figure: leaning against a tree, oversized dark leather jacket, head bent down, glowing cigarette between two fingers, and the smoke from it rising up into the winter clouds. Then he lifts his eyes. And he catches Mark’s gaze and he is not anyone, he is someone—he is Roger, Mark’s Roger.

 

Mark makes sure not to walk too quickly as he leaves the path, crosses the short expanse of grass between them. His shoes crunch over the frost. The first thing he says is, “I don’t remember you smoking.”.

 

He hopes he sounds nonchalant, not stupid.

 

“I’m surprised you remember me at all,” Roger answers.

 

It isn’t windy, but the temperature is low, and the cold seeps through Mark’s jacket just as surely as it is seeping through Roger’s. They stand a suitable distance apart. Mark buries his hands in his pockets. “Seriously, Rog,” he says. “What are you doing here?”

 

“I was in the neighborhood.”

 

“Stop.”

 

“Well, if you’re going to be stupid, I’m going to be stupid, too. What do you think I’m doing here? I came to see you.” He stomps out the cigarette beneath the toe of one of his sneakers, the same worn and ratty ones he wore in high school, and then reaches out awkwardly, one hand on Mark’s arm.

 

Mark can’t step forward, and he can’t step back, so he looks down at the dull green winter grass and the butt of Roger’s cigarette. And even though Roger didn’t say anything about missing him, he says, “I missed you too.”

 

“Yeah, well—” Roger puts his hand back in his pocket, shrugs up his shoulders, and asks, “Do you know anywhere warm we can go? I’m freezing.”

 

Mark nods, and they are silent for the walk across campus and into the dormitories, until, outside Mark’s room, Roger asks about roommates.

 

“He’s never here,” Mark answers. “The only person you’ll have to worry about is Benny.”

 

He pushes open the door, lets Roger in first, watches him shrug out of his coat and sit down on the corner bed.

 

“Benny?” Roger asks. The crease between his eyes says jealousy, the tone of his voice says fear, and Mark thinks of the groupies, the girls with too much makeup and too many necklaces and bracelets, the girls who know all of the words to the songs he writes in that deserted city loft.

 

He hesitates a moment, then—

 

“He lives in the next room over. He’s just a friend.”

 

Mark puts down his bag, takes off his coat and his scarf. It is a weird feeling, to know that Roger is here, to know that Roger is so close, to know that Roger is watching his every movement. To know that Roger came here to see him.

 

“I haven’t slept with any of them,” Roger says, suddenly, just as Mark sits down at the opposite end of the bed. “Any of the—”

 

“Groupies?”

 

“Yeah.” His cheeks, already pink from the wind, turn a deeper red. “It still feels weird to say.”

 

They sit in silence, awkward yet comfortable, the space between them both too gaping and too short.

 

“You dyed your hair,” Mark says, sudden and surprised, as if he had just noticed. He closes the gap, reaches out his hand and skims his palm over Roger’s bleached blond spikes. 

 

“You hate it?”

 

“No—I like it,” Mark answers, and drops his hand, but the space between them is gone now, gone with all of the questions that Mark had wanted to ask, gone with all of the words he had wanted to say.

 

It doesn’t matter. It is only Roger, returned to him, still so much what he was in high school (awkward, hoping, uncompromising), yet almost unrecognizable for his city months (harsh edges, anger, art). It is only Roger. It is only Roger and nothing else.

 

*

 

Over the next two days, Mark skips five classes. Instead of economics, he shows Roger the science library. Instead of calculus, he gives Roger a tour of downtown Providence. Instead of Intro to English Lit, he sneaks Roger back into the dormitories, locks his dorm room door behind them.

 

On Friday, they buy sandwiches and meet Benny in the cafeteria, where he is once again not following his own advice. Roger shakes his hand across the table. Mark isn’t sure how to introduce them, so he refers to Roger as “my friend from home.”

 

Roger keeps his hand on Mark’s leg, under the table, the whole time they are eating, and Benny pretends not to notice.

 

When Roger excuses himself, Benny snaps, “What do you think you’re doing?”

 

It comes out of nowhere, this anger, and Mark can only answer weakly, “What do you mean?”

 

“I mean that that Roger guy has been here two days and you’ve spent every waking second with him.”

 

Mark lets the nervousness run out of his muscles, straightens up and picks at the remains of his dinner and says, “Damn Benny, jealous much?”

 

“That’s not what I mean,” Benny answers, and lowers his voice, and leans in closer, a gross parody of the first secret they shared. “You haven’t gone to class. You’ve locked yourself up in your room with him all day—”

 

“Is this about him being a guy? Is this about me sleeping with a guy?”

 

“No!” Benny shakes his head roughly; he is annoyed, at the end of his patience. He stands up so suddenly and so violently that a few heads turn in their direction, and Mark has to focus all of his attention on ignoring them, on keeping his gaze steady and his anger down.

 

“He’s an artist, Mark. He’s a New York City musician. He plays in badly lit clubs and lives in a half-empty loft with no heat.”

 

“And you think he’s not good enough for me?” Mark asks. He can’t tell if he’s angry or just hurt. “You think that because I’m in the Ivy League, and living off of my parents’ money, and so deeply in debt to them that I can’t even make my own decisions anymore, that he doesn’t deserve me?”

 

His volume has gone up, despite his best intentions, and the staring eyes have multiplied. Benny is standing there, shaking his head, slowly and without any emotion now but exhaustion. He leans his fists on the table and says, low and now, finally, to the point. “I think,” he says, “that it’s the other way around. If you stay here, you won’t deserve him.”

 

*

 

Mark finds Roger outside the cafeteria, a darker shadow amid the lighter shadows of early evening. He is smoking again, and the only two points of light are the orange glow of his cigarette and, above his head, the streetlamp that has just turned on.

 

Mark leans against the wall, just as Roger is doing, and they stand there in silence for a few minutes.

 

“I think—I think I’m going to have to go back,” Roger says, then adds, “tomorrow,” almost as an afterthought.

 

“I figured,” Mark answers.

 

“And—what about you?”

 

Mark wishes Roger hadn’t said it out loud, even though the question has been there, between them, for two days now, and for months yet before. The last time he asked it, almost a year ago now—and Mark can see him still, eyes averted, gaze steadily directed at that tree outside the window, which was just beginning to turn green after a long, unrelenting chill—there had only been one answer to give, and it had been the wrong answer. Now Mark is afraid to reply, afraid that whatever he says will be wrong again, afraid that third chances don’t exist like second chances do.

 

“I want to—” he says.

 

“That’s not an answer.”

 

“I know.”

 

He knows. A long silence falls over them, before he answers again, and in that silence, in that growing darkness, Roger reaches out and takes his hand.


End file.
